Thursday, December 06, 2012

When it rains it pours for the Michigan Education Association. It was recently defeated on Election Day when it attempted to pass a ballot proposal that would have enshrined collective bargaining in the state constitution. Now it’s in full panic mode about a rumored Right to Work bill that may be introduced in the state legislature.

So as the union’s power is waning, it appears the cupboard may be going bare, too.

The MEA has been foundering under staggering liabilities for the last few years, and it may have just gone over the cliff.

Despite only a minor drop in membership – less than 2 percent – a recently-filed financial report reveals the union’s net assets dropped from $-111 million to $-159 million in one year.

That appears largely due to a massive increase in its pension liability for its own employees

The union’s 2011 report revealed its pension and health care liability was $163,921,351. In 12 months, it ballooned by $44.6 million to a new total of $208,524,148. This increase accounts almost completely for the union’s massive $48 million drop in net assets.

The irony, of course, is that the union is suffering from the same type of pension liability headaches it routinely imposes on school districts and the state government.

The union is learning that it costs too much to guarantee employees sweet pension deals, particularly during hard times. Given that reality, one might expect the MEA to have more mercy on local school boards and the state when it comes to demanding cushy pensions for teachers.

MEA employees have demanded from the union what the union has been demanding on behalf of its dues payers. It’s a vicious, unsustainable cycle and everyone is paying the price.

Just how far has the culture in government schools devolved? School district efforts to professionalize staff is now considered an affront to teachers. At least that’s the attitude emanating from teachers in the Hampton, New Hampshire SAU 90 school district.

The school board is considering an update to its dress-code policy for teachers, and, according to Seacoastonline.com, “several teachers are insulted such a policy exists, telling them blue jeans, sneakers, flip-flops and tank tops are off limits.”

Superintendent Kathleen Murphy said staff members feel the proposed policy is “derogatory and condescending.”

It’s derogatory to ask professionals to dress a little more professionally that the young children in their charge?

Thank goodness several school board members are rejecting this protest as an affront to their authority. Citizens elect the board to run the schools and make the rules. Nobody elected the union to run anything.

“’Who backs up management?” board member Ginny Bridle-Russell asked. “What happens if they go to a teacher and say, ‘I don't feel that dress is appropriate, it's too short,’ and the teacher (responds by saying), ‘Says who?’”

Board Chairwoman Charlotte Ring said dress codes must be standardized in districts like Hampton that have more than one school.

“I wouldn't mind going without a policy if we had one building principal and one school,” Ring said. “But we have three schools and three building principals, and what may be acceptable in one school might not be in another.”

The fact that any school board has to navigate a controversy over the employee dress code illustrates the alarming amount of power teachers unions have grabbed over time.

The unions use that same power to block changes that really matter to students, like new evaluations that increase teacher accountability and improve instruction.

The proposed dress policy in Hampton is on hold for now and the superintendent is planning to report back to the school board in January with more information, according to the news report.

In the meantime, teachers will continue to be free to dress like they’re on the seashore instead of a classroom.

A new statute in Illinois makes safety the primary consideration in public schools awarding contracts to school bus operators. This replaces the taxpayer-friendly rule that contracts should be awarded to the qualified provider that bids the lowest price. Safety has already been part of qualification. The statute passed the Illinois Legislature at the behest of the Teamsters Union, which has a master agreement with First Student School Bus Transportation Services (a subsidiary of the UK's First Group). The agreement makes it difficult for First Student to compete on price with relatively union-free operators such as Durham School Services (a subsidiary of the UK's National Express Group).

John T. Coli, a Teamster official, exclaimed, “The new law will finally ensure that driver safety, skills and student security are not trumped by reckless, fly-by-night owner-operators hoping to win contracts with the lowest possible bid.” Which operators are “reckless and fly-by-night”? To the Teamsters and their political satraps, they are, by definition, union-free operators.

Another Teamster boss, James T. Glimco, passionately proclaimed, “It’s one thing for the state to want to save money on its transportation services, but we cannot jeopardize student safety to help Illinois save a few extra bucks on its contracts.” But the new statute has very little to do with student safety. It is really about rent-seeking—that is, decreasing the competitive advantage of operators who are relatively free of excessive Teamster-imposed labor costs. Illinois safety bureaucrats will always rank a Teamster-impaired school bus operator as safer than any of its competitors, notwithstanding that actual safety records show no significant differences.

And First Student is definitely union-impaired. In its commentary regarding First Student's financial prospects for fiscal year 2012, Bank of America wrote, “We believe that the current school bidding season will be challenging, with [First Student] protecting its margins at the cost of volume, and thus potentially losing a number of contracts to competition.” It has to protect its margins because of its Teamster-driven increases in labor costs.

How did First Student fall prey to the Teamsters? Beginning in 2001 the union undertook a corporate smear campaign to depreciate First Student's reputational capital. In 2006, Martin Gilbert, the Chairman of FirstGroup, signaled surrender when, at the UK company's Annual General Meeting, he promised to “stamp out anti-union behavior” and declared that the company “would do everything in its power to ensure the company was neutral on the issue of employee representation.” From 2006 to 2008 the Teamsters and their favorite academic union apologists—e.g., John Logan of San Francisco State University and Lance Compa of Cornell University—attacked First Student for its alleged failure to live up to the promises of 2006. Curiously, Logan and Compa argued that United Nations and International Labor Organization rules require employer neutrality in union representation campaigns.

In 2008 First Student fully surrendered to the Teamsters by adopting a “Freedom of Association” policy that compels it to remain neutral in all Teamster organizing efforts. First Student’s freedom of association policy requires it “to refrain from management conduct . . . which is intended to influence an employee's view or choice with regard to labor union representation.” The result? According to William Gould, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board in the Clinton administration and a monitor of First Student's neutrality policy, First Student's “union membership increased from approximately 18 percent to more than 80 percent” from 2008 through 2010. Gould thinks this is wonderful, but it is actually nothing more than a malign consequence of surrender-through-neutrality.

Notwithstanding William Gould to the contrary, when a company that is a target of union organizing refrains from providing its employees with reasons to remain union-free, it trespasses against its employees' freedom of association.

Freedom of association has two parts: any person can agree to associate with any other person (or group) and any person can refuse to associate with any other person (or group). In brief, freedom of association means any person is free to associate with any other person who is willing to associate with him.

To give effect to worker freedom of association the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was amended in 1947 to permit and encourage employer free speech in union organizing campaigns. Freedom of association requires that workers make an uncoerced, informed choice regarding unionization. That choice requires that workers hear both sides of the unionization debate. Employer neutrality is a trap for employers and employees.

The Teamsters are trying to capture Durham in the neutrality trap, but Durham has chosen to speak vigorously and truthfully against unionization whenever and wherever the Teamsters try to corral more dues-payers among its employees.

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Background

Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.

The only qualification you really need for any job is: "Can you do it?"

Particularly in academe, Leftism is motivated by a feeling of superiority, a feeling that they know best. But how fragile that claim clearly is when they do so much to suppress expression of conservative ideas. Academic Leftists, despite their pretensions, cannot withstand open debate about ideas. In those circumstances, their pretenses are contemptible. I suspect that they are mostly aware of the vulnerability of their arguments but just NEED to feel superior

"The two most important questions in a society are: Who teaches our children? What are they teaching them?" - Plato

Keynes did get some things right. His comment on education seems positively prophetic: "Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”

"If you are able to compose sentences in Latin you will never write a dud sentence in English." -- Boris Johnson

"Common core" and its Australian equivalent was a good idea that was hijacked by the Left in an effort to make it "Leftist core". That made it "Rejected core"

TERMINOLOGY: The English "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".

The BIGGEST confusion in British terminology, however, surrounds use of the term "public school". Traditionally, a public school was where people who were rich but not rich enough to afford private tutors sent their kids. So a British public school is a fee-paying school. It is what Americans or Australians would call a private school. Brits are however aware of the confusion this causes benighted non-Brits so these days often in the media use "Independent" where once they would have used "public". The term for a taxpayer-supported school in Britain is a State school, but there are several varieties of those. The most common (and deplorable) type of State school is a "Comprehensive"

MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).

There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.

Another true modern parable: I have twin stepdaughters who are both attractive and exceptionally good-natured young women. I adore both of them. One got a university degree and the other was an abject failure at High School. One now works as a routine government clerk and is rather struggling financially. The other is extraordinarily highly paid and has an impressive property portfolio. Guess which one went to university? It was the former.

The above was written a couple of years ago and both women have moved on since then. The advantage to the "uneducated" one persists, however. She is living what many would see as a dream.

The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed

On June 6, 1944, a large number of young men charged ashore at Normandy beaches into a high probability of injury or death. Now, a large number of young people need safe spaces in case they might hear something that they don't like.

Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a First Class Honours degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.

Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor

"Secretary [of Education] Bennett makes, I think, an interesting analogy. He says that if you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, Federal, State, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're liable to be given more money to do it with." -- Ronald Reagan

I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.

Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".

For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts. Nothing else will ever be of service to them ... Stick to Facts, sir!" So spake Mr Gradgrind, Dickens's dismal schoolteacher in Hard Times, published 1854. Mr Gradgrind was undoubtedly too narrow but the opposite extreme -- no facts -- would seem equally bad and is much closer to us than Mr Gradgrind's ideal

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learned much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!

Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.

Popper in "Against Big Words": "Every intellectual has a very special responsibility. He has the privilege and the opportunity of studying. In return, he owes it to his fellow men (or 'to society') to represent the results of his study as simply, clearly and modestly as he can. The worst thing that intellectuals can do - the cardinal sin - is to try to set themselves up as great prophets vis-à-vis their fellow men and to impress them with puzzling philosophies. Anyone who cannot speak simply and clearly should say nothing and continue to work until he can do so."

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

Comments above from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former teacher at both High School and university level

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here